This story is fantastic. Old film dating back to 1925 has been found in an archive in Worcestershire. For anybody nearby it seems that the films, having been restored, are now being shown to the public in small venues in the Midlands
Mitchell and Kenyon films of pre-WW1 Lancashire also provide a fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary people at that time. M&K used to spend the day filming everyday scenes then would charge people to watch them in a marquee in the evening. Of course they had a tremendous audience of people desperate to actually see themselves on film for the very first time.
Film and TV provide invaluable material for historians and, whether documentary or drama, provide a glimpse of life, values and social behaviour of the era. It's a shame so much old film was lost in the 1960s and earlier when film was so expensive it had to be wiped clean and used again.
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